And here’s a quote from Kate Mulgrew in Starlog magazine (March 1995):

“Janeway is the Captain and she has everywhere to go as a character. I would like to take her down into the deepest depths of hell and bring her back up again. I would like to see her weeping. I would like to see her out of control, but only for a while. I would like to see her make calls that everyone else is opposed to. I would like to see her experience every shade, color and emotion. All of it. And, I’m sure she will.”

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7 comments for “Episode 1: Favorite Female Characters”

Tai

March 23, 2015 at 3:49 am

Wow, that was awesome and so much fun. I want to put in a plug for Jadzia Dax as my fave character. While her sex is clearly female (she does have super boob powers after all just to make sure we know okay and hips) her gender depends on her personal whim at any given moment. And she has zero conflict about it. She chooses to act as either a man or a woman whenever she wants to and nobody cares. If she wants to marry Whorf she’ll be a Klingon Woman to get the job done, if she’s going to war, she’ll be a Klingon Man to get the job done. I like it. A lot. Because it’s just who she is, no questions asked.
I think you made a good point about DS9, everyone works together but not toward the same goal. Hardly any television is that complex, it makes DS9 something unique.
And about Janeway, you made a good point that in the beginning all female characters existed in relationship to the men. On Voyager, all the characters exist in relationship to a very specific woman, which frankly rocks.
Beverly Crusher was important to me too, as a teenager, I was tired of women always being sexy and Crusher was real.

Awesome new podcast, I am very excited you’re doing this, and I’m going to keep listening 🙂
(I’m also a Jadzia-person, and I’m really hoping you’ll talk about her gender-trill-thing stuff, the good and the bad :3 )

I was especially struck by what you said about the impact of “Voyager” at the age when girls tend to drop out of science and math. I will confess, I am not a huge “Voyager” fan. I honestly don’t believe it’s a gender thing; I just didn’t find the show very exciting (the franchise was starting to feel spread too thin for me in the 90s… like Bilbo wearing the One Ring, “a bit of butter scraped over too much bread”). But, in this year of its 20th anniversary (!), I have read a lot of tributes to it, commenting on the importance of having all of its strong female characters — Janeway, Belanna, Kes, Seska, Seven — onscreen. Yours is not the first comment I’ve heard giving Janeway credit for inspiring a woman to pursue a science/tech career.

My daughter is currently seven years old, and *loves* science. She even decided, on her own, to enter her elementary school’s first-ever science fair; I am going to go see her model of a carbon atom after work tonight! She watched all of the “Cosmos” reboot last year, and she regularly watches (and re-watches!) episodes of PBS’ “Nova” and National Geographic Channel’s “Brain Games.” Should her enthusiasm for STEM ever flag, I’ll have to remember what you said about “Voyager,” and see if I can’t get her to watch it with her old Star Trek-loving dad. (Or, for that matter, on her own!)

Thanks for putting this podcast out – I think you are filling a real gap in the Trek podcast universe. I’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings among fans of that *other* “Star-” franchise — the one getting a new movie this December! — about “having diversity pushed down our throats.” Drives me crazy. You spoke very well about why diversity matters, why representation matters… I wish I could convince these folks of the same thing. Fortunately, such attitudes seem not as common among Trek fans; still, hearing your podcast is a welcome development. May it live long and prosper!

I have somehow only now discovered this podcast and I’m so excited! I listened to episodes 1 and 2 last night and most of 3 on my way to work this morning. I have a lot of thoughts about feminism and social justice stuff on Star Trek and in sci-fi in general, so it is really awesome to hear others with a similar outlook, and I’m so excited to see that not only is the podcast still going strong, it’s expanded to include a blog.